


petty, childish, a little competitive

by lochTenderness (theseourbodies)



Category: Kuroko no Basuke | Kuroko's Basketball
Genre: Alternate Universe - Naruto Fusion, Gen, M/M, OCs (but they're very cute), aged up character(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-10
Updated: 2020-06-10
Packaged: 2021-03-04 05:42:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,077
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24648910
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theseourbodies/pseuds/lochTenderness
Summary: Kagami Taiga nominates his genin team for the chunin exams with no regrets
Relationships: Kagami Taiga & OCs, Kagami Taiga/Kuroko Tetsuya
Comments: 2
Kudos: 14





	petty, childish, a little competitive

**Author's Note:**

> *deep sigh* Set vaguely pre-Naruto canon

“Tai-sensei, Tai-sensei!” 

“What, what you little brats?” 

The rabble goes quiet. There are only three of them, but it’s always a circus when they’re in the village; his highly trained genin, silent death in the field, lose all caution as soon as they’re through the gates. He ought to train it out of them. He really ought to.

Maia speaks up first, because she’s his favorite and she, unfortunately, knows it. “Did you mean what you said?” She doesn’t fidget anymore, not since she so methodically removed anything to fidget with from her uniform and her body. She doesn’t even shift. He feels the anxiety coming off her in a slight, steady wave all the same. 

“’Course I did. I told you before, I’ll never lie to you. This is too important, anyway.” 

“So, you really think we’re ready?” Kotarou asks mostly to the air. He’s the youngest of the lot of them by two full years, but his age only shows in these rare moments of uncertainty. Taiga never gotten the full story about him from anyone, but he can guess with certainty that the kid’s homelife is complicated.

“’Course he does, Kou-kun, he said it already! He said we were!” Umi burbles at him. If she’s uncertain, he can’t see it, and that’s good—she’s the undeniable team leader even when they’re not on missions, and she can’t afford to falter. He flicks her high, pale ponytail, a subtle reward that makes her sparkle up at him. 

“Alright, alright, simmer down,” Taiga tells them sternly, more shocked than anyone when they all settle, standing in a relatively tidy row in front of him, Umi in the middle and a little ahead, though she’s turning out to be the shortest of all of them now that Maia’s hit her first growth spurt. Two years together as a team has seen them settle into a pattern with one another. It’s yet another thing on an ever-growing list that Taiga really ought to be training them out of. 

“Short answer, yes, of course I think you’re ready. You’ve proven that you can meet even the more advanced requirements for the exams,” he tells them all, because Kotarou needs to hear it directly from him and Umi deserves the backup. “We hit the recommended amount of c-rank missions about a month ago, and you all have been working hard on individual style. You’re more than ready.” 

Umi straightens up as he talks, that often-forgotten Yamanaka pride straightening her spine—and sticking her nose a little further into the air. Even Koutaro follows her lead; he even slaps his hands against Maia’s when she offers a low-five behind Umi’s back.

“That being said—” he’s interrupted by a low grumble from Maia’s stomach. He woofs out a laugh as the tall, proud kunoichi in front of him transforms rapidly back into an embarrassed teenage girl. Her face slowly squinches up in horror as Umi slaps her hands over her mouth and then frees one to slap it over Kotarou’s, who is going red with the effort of not giggling. 

“That being said, let’s grab a bite before we get into this. I’ll need the energy to deal with you all, anyway.” 

\---

Taiga had never been called indulgent in his life before he was assigned a genin team. He’d fought against the order to take one at all, but the Hokage hadn’t been willing to hear it. Loyalty is founded, he had said, when a ninja takes their very first steps forward. Genin were usually loyal to their jounin, and so loyal jounin made for loyal genin, who became loyal chunin, and so on. Taiga had understood the theory, but only because he was a living, breathing piece of proof that it worked; he wouldn’t have been loyal to anything if not for his old jounin sensei. He’d still almost stormed out of the meeting when it was over—his only consolation had been the look of disbelief on Momoi and Aomine’s faces (polite and stupid, respectively) when they’d been assigned teams, too. 

Meeting the team had been every bit of the disaster that Taiga had thought it would be. They’d been young and small and one of them was even smaller than the rest and another of them was even younger. No bloodline limit prodigies for Kagami Taiga, not that he had wanted to deal with that mess, either. Just an overly accomplished kid with an inferiority complex, the half-forgotten fourth daughter of a family of professional busy-bodies, and a devout try-too-hard. It hadn’t been the best of beginnings. 

Now, he rattles off their massive orders from memory at the ramen stand (cheap, hot, filling for even a team of bottomless pits.) He knows their strengths, their weaknesses—more importantly, he knows their limits. He knows that Maia can drop a man twice her size without a thought, but the smaller the opponents are, the longer her hesitation will be. He knows that Kotarou will be a taijutsu master one day, if he gets out of his own way. He knows that Umi is a natural born leader who doesn’t have the raw power to make people really feel it right away. He knows them. 

Loyal jounin mean loyal genin, but Taiga’s known for a while that he’s in serious danger of being more loyal to these kids than to the needs of the village. He hadn’t wanted to nominate them at all for the exams. 

He swallows too hard and clears his throat. He’d nominated them anyway exactly because he hadn’t wanted to—this wasn’t about emotion or care. He was their teacher, not their dad. 

“The chunin exams aren’t going to be like work in the field. Things like pride and teamwork won’t matter when you go through your trials.” 

Umi swallows her mouthful, her misplaced family pride raising its sleek blonde head, but he silences her with a look. 

“This is about survival--Not yours. Konoha’s.” He’s borrowing words, but he doesn’t think his teacher would mind. They’d been simple words meant for two kids who might not have understood anything bigger than that; maybe that’s why he still carries them with him like they’re carved on his heart. 

“Family honor, friendship, anything but your will and your personal skills—the exam won’t care about those things.” 

_What I do, I do for the good of my village. There is always honor in that, whatever Kagami-kun may thinks of me._

Taiga’s a highly trained jounin and he does not flinch at phantom voices in his head. He doesn’t. 

“Kagami-sensei?” Maia prompts him after an over-long silence, always the bravest of all of them. 

“I wasn’t very old when I became a chunin,” Taiga tells them, softening his voice as much as he can. He likes them, cares about them. He wants them to succeed, but more than that he wants them to understand. He hadn’t quite been ten years old when he and Tatsuya had been nominated for the chunin exams. The Academy hadn’t existed then, and the concept of whole classes of pre-genin that would need to be assigned jounin masters when they graduated hadn’t even been a fever dream yet, but the chunin exams had already been a well-established tradition of an even older era. “I passed because I had to, for the village. The exams will be different for you, but the purpose is the same. You’ll pass for the same reasons I did.”

“Pass…”

“We’ll—we can pass?” 

“Of course!” Umi cuts in, tossing her ponytail with one tiny hand. “Of course we’ll pass! You guys are some of the strongest genin in our year, and you have me to lead you. There’s no way we won’t make it. Right, Tai-sensei!”

“At least ask a question, idiot,” Taiga snaps, but she glitters up at him until he can’t help but grin. “But yeah. I believe that. I believe in you all.” 

Kotarou is bright pink, but nothing that Taiga has found has ever managed to stop his smart mouth. “And this has nothing at all to do with Aomine-sensei or Kise-sensei’s teams also being nominated?” he asks slyly. 

“Tch, just who do you think I am, brat?” 

“Petty,” Kotarou says instantly. 

“Childish!” 

“A-a little competitive, Kagami-sensei.” Even _Maia._

“Enough! You hooligans have just lost the last of my good will. Finish your shit, that’s thirty laps around the practice field for not respecting your sensei.” 

Taiga hides a smirk at the howls and groans. They’re still in the village; there’s no harm in being loud when you’re safe. 

\---

Despite what his team might think, Taiga’s not doing this to be competitive. Aomine, Kise, and Momoi were all assigned teams when Taiga was. He knew the other jounin masters with teams, of course, but none of them were people Taiga considered year-mates. It hadn’t been a competition; it had just been time. His kids knew their stuff. They needed to have the chance to prove it before the little moments he’d noticed where they had been chafing at the work became real resentment, became something worse. 

When he lets himself think about it, that’s not the only reason, of course. This year’s batch of genin, minus one or two accelerated cases, had all come from the same pre-genin class, all under the same teacher. He didn’t know if that mattered to the others like it mattered to him, but all three of them had known Kuroko much longer than Taiga; he suspects that the results of these exams aren’t going to be used to only show the examiners that their kids were more than qualified to advance. 

As if thinking of him had brought him into existence, Kuroko’s voice says “I see that Kagami-kun has graduated to corporal punishment. Good for him,” in Taiga’s ear and Taiga 

falls

right out of the tree. At least he lands on his feet.

“Tai-sensei!” Umi bellows, already pounding toward him, Maia and Kotarou neck and neck behind her.

“Sensei? Are you ok?”

“Kagami-sensei?!” 

“I’m fine! It’s fine, get back to your laps,” he snarls at them because this is one of two things: an embarrassing prank or a viciously manipulative genjutsu. Taiga feels the chakra already building in his core, heating his hands as he flashes through the seals--

He doesn’t manage to finish before Kuroko himself lands beside him with much greater control and dignity than Taiga had managed. “Apologies.” 

Taiga gapes at him, instantly absorbing the barely-there wash of Kuroko’s familiar chakra—not a clone, not a conjuring, just Kuroko. “Kuroko you bastard—I’m gonna kill you, for real this time!”

“I am very sorry that I caught Kagami-kun un-aware. Please forgive me.” 

“You can earn my forgiveness with your life, you littler twerp!” 

His kids all talk over his threats, outraged—but _at him,_ not _for him_. Umi bulls in, pushing at Taiga’s chest (what she can reach of it;) Kotarou practically bounces over to Kuroko; even Maia—even Maia, his favorite!—moves to stand between Taiga and his rightful prey. 

“Tai-sensei, stop being mean to Kuroko-sensei!” 

“Did you really scare him, Sensei? Is that why he fell out of the tree? Teach me how, Kuroko-sensei!” Taiga wishes he could get Kotarou even a half as excited as he was now about their ninjutsu drills. He scowls at the boy, comically betrayed. 

“Tai-sensei!” Umi chirps again angrily and he stops pushing against her to scowl down at her. 

“Alright, enough! Quiet down, you lot, I need to talk to Kuroko alone—”

“You won’t hurt him?” Maia asks, squaring her broad shoulders up. 

“Yeah, yeah, you won’t hurt him right Tai-sensei?” 

“I believe that Yamanaka-san and Hanai-san are requiring a promise, Kagami-kun,” Kuroko says, with a serene little smile. God, Taiga just wants to—

“Fine,” he growls through his teeth, “ _Fine,_ I promise, now pipe the hell down before I really get mad. And get back to your drills!” 

“Kagami-sensei always makes us run when he’s mad,” Kotarou confides mournfully to Kuroko. “It’s the _worst._ ” 

“Go! Or it’ll be running drills _and_ I’ll have you climb the cliffs!” 

His team scamper away from him, calling to one another indignantly. He watches their form for a second, trying to see if any of them got hurt in the headlong dash to “protect” Taiga from their former Academy sensei. He doesn’t have the eyes to see much, though, and eventually he turns his scowl on Kuroko. 

“Before I give you exactly what you deserve, I guess I should say ‘welcome back.’” 

Kuroko inclines his head, still and stoic once again. He hangs in the half-shadows of the treeline, tucked away. Taiga can see a strip of solid white bandage rising over the flak jacket’s collar, cresting like a wave. “Yes. I’m home.” 

No one has ever dared to call Kuroko ‘Tetsu-sensei’ or ‘Kuro-sensei,’ Taiga thinks. Something about him prohibits it—the careful arrangement of his gear even after a post-mission visit to the hospital, the set of his features. It’s been a long time since Taiga’s bothered with the standard uniform; even when he had, it had been specialized for his weapons, his tactics, but he barely knows the sight of Kuroko outside of the jacket and the standard issue pants and undershirt. Kuroko’s eyes are shadowed under the worn headband and he’s put his hands behind his back— proper tokubetsu-jounin-sama, at-ease, back from his mission and ready to report. He and Taiga had been children in the same conflict, but sometimes Taiga thinks they hadn't been fighting the same war.

He gets in close enough to see the even rise and fall of Kuroko’s chest, but not close enough to touch. He and Kuroko watch their students race around the neatly cleared circle of the training grounds at a polite distance from one another. 

“I am sorry I was not there for the nomination. I heard that almost all teams were nominated this year.” 

“It was time,” Taiga says to the tree branches. He’s not exactly nervous—he doesn’t think he’s wired that way. But here, with Kuroko, he can’t help but justify himself. “They’ve started chomping at the bit.”

“I imagine they are not the only ones.” Kuroko nods when Taiga glances at him, smiling just a little. “And I could not have asked for better teachers for them,” Kuroko assures him, answering Taiga’s unacknowledged worries so easily. “They are fully prepared.” 

Or maybe it’s this, Taiga thinks, maybe that’s why people offer up all the casual respect that they can to this perfectly average, perfectly extraordinary specialist. Kuroko’s always been good at pulling people along at a pace he sets, and Taiga’s never been any different. Without a thought, Taiga reaches for him, curls his hand inside the open jacket collar, over the exposed bandages-- 

Kuroko flinches and Taiga flinches, too. He pulls away fast, stung, but Kuroko curls a quick hand around his fleeing wrist, stilling it. It’s a bad idea for either of them to be so grabby with one another, considering who they are, but Taiga’s instincts don’t even twitch. Kuroko has a vague look in his eye, watching something Taiga can’t see.

“Ah, it looks like they’ve found it,” Kuroko says. 

“Found-- what?” Taiga asks stupidly.

“The clone I left in the hospital,” Kuroko answers, perfectly calm.

“The clone you—wait, you _snuck out_? Of the _hospital ward_?” 

“I had other things to do.” 

“Other things like what? What the hell is more important than--” But Taiga would have guessed even if Kuroko wasn’t subtly watching the kids over Taiga's shoulder with a crooked mouth-- almost smiling, almost not. 

“It is easy to become over-attached,” Kuroko murmurs. Taiga glances over his own shoulder to check on his team; in the slow-falling evening, they’re playing a highly weaponized version of tag that they had already known before Taiga had been made responsible for them. He grins, turns back—and finds Kuroko looking right at him. 

“To the kids?” Taiga asks, maybe; he thinks the words make it out before Kuroko’s mouth presses against his, sure and strong. For two trained killers, they really shouldn’t be touching each other so casually all the time, Taiga thinks. One day, one of them is going to get hurt. Kuroko’s still got his wrist trapped in his strong hand; he clutches, an impossibly small show of fear, and Taiga’s only human. He leans in close, pressing tight, remembering in flashes all the ways that you can grip a flak jacket to maneuver, to hold, to lift, to control. Kuroko pulls his captured wrist back up, and Taiga curls his hand back against his neck, hiding the streak of bright white away under his broad palm. Kuroko shivers—his chakra is a steady beat under Taiga’s hand, pumping along with his blood. He feels like a fine mist over the grasses and the loam of the froest floor in the watery morning sun, he feels like something slipping through shadows, hunting. He leans his head away from Taiga’s hand on him, opening himself up, and that’s good, that’s--

There’s a suspicious lack of activity going on behind them on the field. Someone teenager-sized hiccups weakly and Taiga sighs. 

“They’re gonna climb that damn mountain _twice_ ,” he mutters. 

Kuroko smiles, bright-eyed, and skates his free palm down Taiga’s side, lets Taiga feel the barest brush of his excitement. 

“The team could stand a day off,” Kuroko’s voice says in his ear again. “And Kagami-kun really should welcome me home properly.” There’s a soft press against Taiga’s mouth, like a kiss except for how it comes with a mouthful of leaves as Kuroko disappears with a pop of displaced air. Kagami has a second to be grateful they’re not in another goddamn tree before he wheels around to face his genin. The whole traitorous team of them have gone right back to chasing one another around, flickering in and out of sight. 

“Aren’t teachers supposed to be all about diligence,” Taiga mutters to the empty air, but it’s taking everything he has to keep from grinning like an idiot. What the hell— the kids barely respect him anyway, and it’s not going to hurt his reputation any more if he cancels the rest of their practice like a love-sick idiot. Hell, considering who it was he’d been caught kissing, it might even _help._

Stubbornly, he swallows his smile and stomps over to his kids. “Alright brats, you’re in luck....”

**Author's Note:**

> no one's ever called kagami indulgent except kuroko, who calls his ass out all the time. 
> 
> Thanks for reading!!


End file.
